The warrior's apprentice Read Free Page B

lips, staring out the window, not looking at Miles. His fingers drummed again. “It’s all the fault of this damned creeping democratism,” he burst out querulously. “A lot of imported off-planet nonsense. Your father did not do Barrayar a service to encourage it. He had a fine opportunity to stamp it out when he was Regent—which he wasted totally, as far as I can see...” he trailed off. “In love with off-planet notions, off-planet women,” he echoed himself more faintly. “I blame your mother, you know. Always pushing that egalitarian tripe...”
    “Oh, come on,” Miles was stirred to object. “Mother’s as apolitical as you can get and still be conscious and walking around.”
    “Thank God, or she’d be running Barrayar today. I’ve never seen your father cross her yet. Well, well, it could have been worse...” The old man shifted again, twisting in his pain of spirit as Miles had in his pain of body.
    Miles lay in his chair, making no effort to defend the issue or himself. The Count could be trusted to argue himself down, taking both parts, in a little time.
    “We must bend with the times, I suppose. We must all bend with the times. Shopkeepers’ sons are great soldiers, now. God knows, I commanded a few in my day. Did I ever tell you about the fellow, when we were fighting the Cetagandans up in the Dendarii Mountains back behind Vorkosigan Surleau—best guerilla lieutenant I ever had. I wasn’t much older than you, then. He killed more Cetagandans that year... His father had been a tailor. A tailor, back when it was all cut and stitched by hand, hunched over all the little detailing...” He sighed for the irretrievable past. “What was the fellow’s name...”
    “Tesslev,” supplied Miles. He raised his eyebrows quizzically at his feet. Perhaps I shall be a tailor, then. I’m built for it. But they’re as obsolete as Counts, now.
    “Tesslev, yes, that was it. He died horribly when they
    caught his patrol. Brave man, brave man...” Silence fell between them for a time.
    The old Count spotted a straw, and clutched at it. “Was the test fairly administered? You never know, these days—some plebian with a personal ax to grind...”
    Miles shook his head, and moved quickly to cut this fantasy down before it had a chance to grow and flower. “Quite fair. It was me. I let myself get rattled, didn’t pay attention to what I was doing. I failed because I wasn’t good enough. Period.”
    The old man twisted his lips in sour negation. His hand closed angrily, and opened hopelessly. “In the old days no one would have dared question your right...”
    “In the old days the cost of my incompetence would have been paid in other men’s lives. This is more efficient, I believe.” Miles’s voice was flat.
    “Well...” the old man stared unseeingly out the window. “Well—times change. Barrayar has changed. It underwent a world of change between the time I was ten and the time I was twenty. And another between the time I was twenty and forty. Nothing was the same... And another between the time I was forty and eighty. This weak, degenerate generation—even their sins are watered down. The old pirates of my father’s day could have eaten them all for breakfast and digested their bones before lunch... Do you know, I shall be the first Count Vorkosigan to die in bed in nine generations?” He paused, gaze still fixed, and whispered half to himself, “God, I’ve grown weary of change. The very thought of enduring another new world dismays me. Dismays me.”
    “Sir,” said Miles gently.
    The old man looked up quickly. “Not your fault, boy, not your fault. You were caught in the wheels of change and chance just like the rest of us. It was pure chance, that the assassin chose that particular poison to try and kill your father. He wasn’t even aiming for your mother. You’ve done well despite it. We—we just expected too much of you, that’s all. Let no one say you have not done